. Turn
where you will from Genesis to Revelation--always an enemy. He is keen. He
is subtle. He is malicious. He is cruel. He is obstinate. He is a master.
The second thread is this: the leaders for God have always been men of
prayer above everything else. They are men of power in other ways,
preachers, men of action, with power to sway others but above all else men
of prayer. They give prayer first place. There is one striking exception
to this, namely, King Saul. And most significantly a study of this
exception throws a brilliant lime light upon the career of Satan. King
Sauls seems to furnish the one great human illustration in scripture of
heaven's renegade fallen prince. These special paragraphs to be quoted are
like the pattern in the cloth where the colours of the yarn come into more
definite shape. The gospels form the central pattern of the whole where
the colours pile up into sharpest contrast.

<u>Praying is Fighting.</u>

But let us turn to the Book at once. For we _know_ only what it tells. The
rest is surmise. The only authoritative statements about Satan seem to be
these here. Turn first to the New Testament.

The Old Testament is the book of illustrations; the New of explanations,
of teaching. In the Old, teaching is largely by kindergarten methods. The
best methods, for the world was in its child stage. In the New the
teaching is by precept. There is precept teaching in the Old; very much.
There is picture teaching in the New; the gospels full of it. But picture
teaching, acted teaching, is the characteristic of the Old, and precept
teaching of the New. There is a wonderfully vivid picture in the Old
Testament, of this thing we are discussing. But first let us get the
teaching counterpart in the new, and then look at the picture.

Turn to Ephesians. Ephesians is a prayer epistle. That is a very
significant fact to mark. Of Paul's thirteen letters Ephesians is
peculiarly the prayer letter. Paul is clearly in a prayer mood. He is on
his knees here. He has much to say to these people whom he has won to
Christ, but it comes in the parenthesis of his prayer. The connecting
phrase running through is--"for this cause I pray.... I bow my knees."
Halfway through this rare old man's mind runs out to the condition of
these churches, and he puts in the always needed practical injunctions
about their daily lives. Then the prayer mood reasserts itself, and the
epistle finds its climax in a remarkable paragra